


Moments

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Sick Tony, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life should be good. Tony has almost made it through high school, his boyfriend is the hottest guy in school. Sure, he doesn't get along the best with his parents, but that seems to be normal for teenagers, isn't it?</p>
<p>It's just, the headaches won't stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the gorgeous [quandong_crumble](http://archiveofourown.org/users/quandong_crumble/pseuds/quandong_crumble) my long suffering beta. I'm glad she puts up with me. 
> 
> Thanks to jujitsuelf and joidianne4eva for the read through. 
> 
>  
> 
> Some content might be trigger-y, but tags create spoilers. There are warnings in the end note if you feel like you need them. But, I warn you, they are spoilers.

“They’re looking at us funny again.”

 

Tony looked up from his textbook at Steve’s words, blinking several times before scanning the other students who’d ventured outside into the cold, pale early winter sunlight. Several of the students were looking over him and Steve, whispering behind their hands like they usually did. Tony was used to it now, he accepted that he was a bit of a nerd, and then had managed to capture the attention of the most gorgeous guy in school. If people had an issue with him going out with Steve, then they could all go get fucked.

 

“Take a picture, it lasts longer!”

 

All the eyes snapped away from them so quick he was sure they’d all get whiplash. Served them right if they did. He turned back to look at Steve, who was giving him the amused version of his “disapproving face”; that look that Tony earned every time he did something silly that would draw too much attention to them, or get into a fight with someone. The amused version was when Steve wasn’t really disapproving, but because he was the “sensible” one, he felt like he had to make the token protest.

 

“Tony, not going to make friends like that.” Steve chided, but it didn’t stop him from taking one of Tony’s hands in his and entwining their fingers together. It was almost cold enough to start wearing gloves again.

 

“Don’t need friends. One day, I’ll be super rich, and then I’ll have minions instead.” Tony smirked, leaning over to nuzzle his cold nose against Steve’s cheek, brushing his lips against skin ever so lightly. “And, in the meantime, I’ve got you.”

 

Steve nudged him with his elbow, pushing him away. “Thanks. Love you too, you pest.”

 

Tony grinned. “I know.”

 

///

 

“You alright?”

 

It was only at Steve’s voice that Tony realised he had his eyes scrunched closed and his fingers pushing against his temples. He lessened off the pressure, but didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t feel like facing his Physics homework right then, the ache inside his head had started up that morning, and by third period study, it still hadn’t gone away. The headaches were getting worse.

 

“I’m good.” He lifted his head up enough to grin blindly in the direction of Steve’s voice, making sure to keep his voice down, since they were in the library. “Just a headache, probably need coffee. Don’t have coffee do you?”

 

There was a noise of discontent, one that Steve always made whenever Tony was in pain or upset. One hand rested tenderly against the back of his neck, and Tony felt Steve lean over and press a kiss to the top of his head.

 

“No coffee, sorry. Did you want to go see the nurse? Or maybe go home?” Steve’s voice was thick with concern, fingers shifting to run through the hair at the base of his skull.

 

Tony shook his head. “No one home but Jarvis, and they won’t let me go home if mum or dad aren’t there. I have a better idea, how about we break out of school grounds and go to the café across the street?”

 

“No, Tony. We’ll get in trouble.” The hand left the back of his neck, and Tony could almost hear the “disapproving face”.

 

“Spoil sport!”

 

A sigh, then the hand was back, fingers gentle and reassuring. “Have a nap. I’ll wake you up before the bell goes.”

 

Tony put his head down, pillowed against his Physics text book. “Yeah, that’s an idea, maybe I’ll learn through osmosis while I’m at it.”

 

///

 

His head hurt. It wasn’t anything new. It’d been going on for a while, he couldn’t even remember when it started. He dreaded the approaching summer, all the heat and sunlight would only make it worse. Maybe he could reverse hibernate, and come back out when it was winter again. He’d miss Steve though.

 

Steve. He missed him now, hadn’t seen him all weekend.

 

He looked up from his laptop, seeing his mum and dad sitting in their arm chairs, both too busy ignoring each other and him to look like they were actually busy doing anything. Still, he cleared his throat. “Can Steve come over?”

 

His mum looked up, a small frown line across her forehead, lips pressed tight together. She glanced at him, then back his dad, but didn’t say anything.

 

His dad looked up from the tablet he was working on, the anger barely masked. “No, he cannot, Anthony. And I think it’s high time you stopped this nonsense.”

 

Tony bristled. “This nonsense” was what his dad reduced his relationship with Steve too. He hadn’t wanted to tell them that Steve was more than a friend, but his mum caught the tail end of one of his phone calls to Steve, and next thing, his parents are looking at him with disgust and telling him he couldn’t hang out with Steve anymore. And his dad had said it like that was final, and the end of the discussion.

 

He slammed his laptop closed, silently apologising to it, in case he’d done any damage, and scrambled up to his feet. “Steve isn’t nonsense, Howard. Don’t you know that homophobia is so last decade?” He spat out the words, and turned to leave before his dad could think to retaliate.

 

Calls of “Come back here, Anthony,” followed him out into the hall, and he started stomping up the stairs, laptop clutched against his chest. If he could, he’d have just left and gone to Steve’s place, but he wasn’t allowed at Steve’s place either.

 

“Master Anthony? Are you alright?”

 

It was only at the sound of his family butler’s voice, that Tony realised he was gripping frantically to the banister rail, and hadn’t moved off of the sixth stair. The pain in his head was getting worse, and he tried to remember the last time he’d slept, or eaten, and he didn’t think it was since school on Friday, but he could have been wrong.

 

He turned slightly, looking over his shoulder at Jarvis, and the whole room seemed to swim, going dark around the edges. He whimpered slightly, the pain intensifying inside his skull. “I want Steve.”

 

“Master Anthony?”

 

“Anthony?”

 

He felt the laptop slip from his grasp, was distantly aware of landing on the stairs with a jolting sounding thud. But everything was black and maybe he made a louder thud when he hit the stairs besides his computer.

 

///

 

There was beeping. There was always beeping, except it wasn’t his alarm clock, and it wouldn’t shut up. He’d tried taking off the monitor once, but that just made the machine squeal and the nurses and doctors go into a panic.

 

“How are you feeling Anthony?”

 

The pretty red headed nurse was on again, but Tony didn’t want to talk to her, he didn’t want to look at the scan results again, didn’t want to see that opaque blotch inside his skull, and he didn’t want them asking stupid questions. He didn’t want the doctors talking over the top of him to his parents and scheduling surgery, like his opinion didn’t even matter. He didn’t want them cutting into his head and removing the tumour.

 

“I want Steve.” He knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he didn’t care. They wouldn’t let him do anything, they wouldn’t even let him see Steve. He was sure he’d seen him outside of his room a few times, but he was always blocked off by one of the nurses, or doctors, and would turn away and leave before Tony could call out to him.

 

The nurse pursed her lips, brow creased, and eyes too pitying for his liking. “Anthony,” she paused, stepping closer to the bed, and making an aborted move to touch his arm. “Anthony, Steve can’t visit you.”

 

“I don’t care what my parents said, just let me see him. I won’t tell if you don’t.” He’d pleaded before, and it had never gotten him anywhere, but maybe if he tried enough times, they’d eventually relent.

 

“Anthony, Steve can’t visit because he isn’t real.”

 

///

 

“I’m not real, am I?”

 

Steve’s voice wavered, he sounded more uncertain and scared than Tony ever remembered him sounding, but it was the most beautiful noise he’d ever heard.

 

“Steve!” He struggled to sit up, glancing frantically around the room until his eyes settled on Steve, sitting there in the chair next to his bed.

 

“Am I, Tony?” Steve looked drawn, thinner and more tired than ever, his eyes sad, and hands wringing together in front of him.

 

He didn’t want to tell Steve the truth, didn’t want to recount the doctor’s explanations that he’d only half listened to himself. How the tumour was pressing against his brain, and causing hallucinations. A specific hallucination. “You’re real to me.”

 

It was a weak protest, and he knew that Steve saw right through it. Those blue eyes grew sadder, but when he reached out Steve’s fingers entwined with his, and he could feel it, feel Steve’s touch, just like he always had. If that wasn’t real, he didn’t know what was.

 

“You should have the surgery, Tony.” Steve couldn’t meet his eye, staring instead at their joined hands.

 

“No.”

 

Steve looked up, face etched with disapproval, but it was nearly overridden with pain. “The tumour is going to kill you. I’m killing you!”

 

“And if I let them cut the tumour out, it will kill you!” He didn’t care if it was killing him. He didn’t care about the pain, he didn’t care about any of it, because it all meant that Steve was still there. “You’re the only person who has ever fucking cared about me, Steve, I’m not letting them take you away from me!”

 

Steve stood up, stepping closer to the bed, leant down and kissed him softly. “You’ve got to let me go, Tony. I’m not real.”

 

Steve’s hand slipped from his grasp, and no amount of reaching, would bring that contact back. “Don’t leave me, Steve. I love you.”

 

There was no answer. The room was empty except for him.

 

///

 

His head didn’t hurt anymore. It just felt empty. The stitches in his scalp itched, and he couldn’t stop touching the patch where they’d cut all his hair off, the prickly beginnings of it growing back against his fingertips only reminded him that the surgery had taken place.

 

Steve was gone.

 

And there was no bringing him back.

 

///

 

When they said he was recovering well enough, the red headed nurse would put him in the wheelchair and take him out of his room and down to the sunroom. He’d sit by the window and the sunlight didn’t hurt his eyes the way it used to. It warmed his skin, yet he would have given it all up again just to have Steve back.

 

He heard the door open, and assumed it was just the nurse, with red hair and sad eyes, coming back to get him again. But no one moved him from where he was parked.

 

“Hello.”

 

The voice was achingly familiar, and Tony snapped his head around so fast to look at the owner of that voice that he made himself dizzy.

 

There was a boy standing by the door, dressed in a hospital gown and clinging to a drip stand as though it was the only thing holding him up. He was shorter than Tony was, had he been standing up, probably around the same age, and sickly looking. It hadn’t been who he’d hoped to see there, sure that his mind was playing tricks on him, because it had sounded so much like Steve. He went to turn back to look out the window again, but paused.

 

The boy blinked at him, blue eyes fringed with eyelashes that looked too long, and too much like eyes he’d seen before. He knew he should say hello, or ask the boy his name, but when he opened his mouth, what he said was completely different.

 

“What are you in for?”

 

The boy looked taken back for a moment, obviously not used to such straight up questioning, his cheeks went pink, but he held Tony’s gaze. “Heart operation. On Monday. You?”

 

Tony tapped his head, watching the boy take in the shaved side of his head. “Brain tumour. Recovery, and chemo, starting soon.”

 

The boy shifted, and cautiously stepped further into the room, coming up to stand alongside the wheelchair, to glance out the window. “I’m not supposed to be out of bed. But it got boring in my room. Clint will probably come find me soon.”

 

“Friend?”

 

“Nurse. He’s pretty funny, tries to keep me in good spirits as much as he can.” The boy leant forward, free hand against the window, face pressed close as though he wanted to just fall through it.

 

“I’m Tony.” He heard himself saying the words, even though he really just wanted to be left alone.

 

The boy turned to face him again, smiling ever so slightly, and holding out his hand.  “Nice to meet you, Tony. I’m Steven.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tony has a brain tumour; Steve is the figment of his imagination, brought on by the brain tumour; removing the brain tumour "kills" Steve.


End file.
